The name Swan Lake represented both mystery and romance when I was a boy. Although the romance part was an unknown concept in my child’s mind, just the name alone evoked a picture of swans swimming and princesses drifting alone gentle currents that guided them to secret rendezvous where they would. . . Well, that was as far as an eight year old boy’s mind knew to travel, which is just as well, I guess.
The mystery was easier to frame. Along the eastern banks of the lake dark shaded alcoves hid their secrets among boulders and rotting logs, and overhanging trees shaded deep pools where any type of monster might lurk to capture and devour a boy if he swam too close, or fell out of a canoe.
The streams that fed the lake twisted off into a distance too far for a boy to fathom, but I knew that back there somewhere pirates had hid treasures, and a lost family like the Swiss Family Robinson lived in a fabulous tree house.
I watched butterflies and dragonflies in the summer, and winter ice slowly solidify and claim the lake’s life as it created a solitude that defied imagination, not unlike Superman‘s Fortress of Solitude but without a super hero, or was it?
My mother was born in a house on Main Street in Center Moriches, grew up in Mastic on Mastic Road. When she was a girl, her family used the hills along the eastern bank of the lake for sleigh riding. They skated on the lake’s thick January ice, and fished its waters after spring thaw.
So it was only logical that I took my two daughters to Swan Lake for an opportunity to share in the experiences of two previous generations. We rented a boat with oars. Since they were too young to row, I put my back into the effort and quickly discovered what I’d forgotten. Rowing a boat is serious labor.
But we had the entire day, so off we went to explore the farthest reaches of the lake’s north side. We discovered small islands, and the overhanging trees I once dreamed about, and finally when exhaustion began to claim my arms, shoulders and back, we spotted a swan family.
This is not always the safest place to be. Swan mothers and fathers are notorious for protecting their young. I had two brothers-in-law who accidentally confronted a swan family while canoeing not far from where the girls and I rowed. Angrily, the male swan flew at them, but went over their heads to warn them away. Several years earlier, a man in a boat died from a broken neck when a male swan’s wing clipped him as the huge bird defended his own.
I stopped rowing and told the girls to be very quiet so we didn’t get the mother and father angry at our intrusion. They remained quiet as we drifted within twenty feet of a line of baby swans paddling feverishly to keep up with mom. They went around the end of the small island where the nest they’d recently left sat now abandoned.
I managed to snap several good photos and then decided that it was time to head off in a different direction, with a feeling inside that told me for one brief moment the boy who once thought of Swan Lake as a mysterious and romantic place now had shared those emotions with a new generation through an e
xperience that happened back where pirates hid treasures and a lost family lived in a fabulous tree house.Technorati Tags:
Swan Lake, Patchogue New York, Schliessmann
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